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A confession is never a hundred per cent guarantee of a conviction, but then there’s the supporting evidence: the photos of drug use after hours in the darkroom earlier that week, the extra order of hydrochloric acid, the broken alibis and Rob’s suicide note. All of them together make a strong case and the CPS are confident they’ll secure convictions that mean Elliott, Simon and Lottie will be going to prison for a very long time.
Jennie takes down the last photo, the picture of Hannah, and holds it in her hands. Hannah’s image stares back at her; piercing blue eyes, sun-kissed make-up free skin, tousled strawberry-blonde hair. Even in the still photo she seems so effervescent, so utterly alive, but it’s just an illusion. Hannah is gone. Jennie’s waited thirty years to find out what happened to her friend, and she’s finally done it. She’s found the truth, and she’s made sure Hannah will get justice.
She bites her lip. Her grief still feels raw and deep. It comes in waves, and there’s no predicting when it will crash over her: in the supermarket, cycling to work, or when she’s watching some reality programme on the telly. It’ll take a long time to fully heal, but something has changed within her. She feels lighter somehow, more loved. The knowledge that the friendship she shared with Hannah was real, and that her friend didn’t betray her as she’d believed all these years, has finally given her closure.
Putting Hannah’s photo into the box, Jennie takes down the rest of the artefacts taped to the top of the whiteboard and then wipes it clean. She carries the archive box across to Zuri’s desk and labels it with the case number, adds the original misper file and all her notes and information on the case she led, and then closes the lid.
There’s nothing more to do. The case is closed.
Walking across to the DCI’s office, Jennie steps inside. She removes from her pocket the folded envelope containing her resignation with immediate effect and places it on his keyboard, so he’ll see it first thing tomorrow. Beside it, she puts her office keys and her police ID.
No second thoughts.
Turning, Jennie collects her jacket and new cycle helmet from her desk and heads towards the door for the last time with a bounce in her step.
It’s time for a change.
Day Eight
Chapter 45
It’s early, not yet seven o’clock, but the morning is already un-seasonably warm. Jennie stands at the safety barrier, a couple of hundred metres back from the crumbling, derelict facade of the original White Cross Academy building. Waiting.
She’s not alone. Gradually over the past half an hour, a small crowd has gathered along the barrier. She recognises quite a few of the faces: Carl and Daisy Winkleman, both wearing black; a group of women whose names she doesn’t know but she remembers as being in the fifth year when she was upper sixth; Dr Fetz from White Cross Surgery; and Belinda, a career school dinner-lady who ruled the canteen back in Jennie’s day and, from what she’s heard, still does.
An older man and woman stand slightly away from the rest of the group; Paul and Shelly Jennings. Their focus is unwaveringly on the school building. Jennie can see the tension in the rigidity of their stance. She can imagine the conflicting emotions they must be feeling right now.
Outside the aged school building, three construction workers in orange high-vis overalls stand conferring over a clipboard. A pair of red kites wheel in the cloudless blue sky overhead. The trees of the Chiltern Forest stand sentry on the hillside stretching up from the old school site. Sunlight reflects off the chalk cross, as if drawing attention to something important that’s about to happen: X marks the spot.
In the distance, the clock in the town square strikes seven.
Jennie’s stomach flips.
It’s time.
A hush falls over the crowd. The high-vis construction workers stride quickly towards a Portakabin at the far side of the site. One enters the cabin, the other two stand to the side of it, looking up at the crumbling old mansion.
A loud siren sounds.
The security officers in yellow tabards move along the safety barrier telling people to stay back. Everyone does as they ask. All eyes are on the building. Anticipation from the gathered crowd seems to crackle in the air like electricity.
Jennie hears a low rumbling as the charges inside the school detonate. For a moment the centre of the stone building seems to wobble. Then it collapses to the ground, sending a huge cloud of dust ballooning into the air around it.
In less than thirty seconds, the original White Cross Academy is gone.
As the dust cloud starts to clear, she can just make out the rubble that is now heaped in the spot where the building once stood. Her eyes start to water, but it’s from the grit in the air rather than any emotional attachment to the building. With the secret it hid from her all these years, she’s happy never to see it again.
The crowd clap for a job well done, but the mood remains sombre. Jennie senses the town needed the building razed to the ground, too. With it gone, the site has been given a clean slate and the possibility of a new beginning.
‘Jennie?’
Recognising the voice, she turns to see Paul and Shelly Jennings approaching. Somehow Hannah’s dad looks smaller, frailer than he did the last time they met. Shelly has her arm through his, almost holding him up. The fire in Paul’s eyes as he shouted at her in the interview room is long gone, replaced by the subdued resignation of a grief-stricken father.
‘I wanted to thank you for finding who took my Hannah,’ says Mr Jennings. ‘I didn’t recognise you at first, but when I read the article in the paper saying how you’d been best friends with Hannah, I remembered. You came to the house once, but didn’t come in, I think?’
Jennie nods. ‘Yes, just the one time.’
Mr Jennings exhales hard. ‘I wasn’t a good dad. I loved Hannah, I really did, but I was angry at the world back then, and sometimes I … I took it out on her. I’m glad she had a good friend, not like those … those …’ As the emotion threatens to overwhelm him, Paul Jennings reaches into his jacket pocket. He removes something then reaches out, pressing it into Jennie’s hand. ‘She’d want you to have this.’
